Almost done being a DINK. Now life gets tough.

For the past several years, I have been classified as a DINK. This means "Dual Income, No Kids". This time is almost behind me. Now what?

I foresee that i'm going to be going through some real hard times in the future. Will it be worth it? Definitely. Will it be tough? Yes. I blame feminists.

1950-ish: imagine. Before the feminist movement gained real steam, the household was like this: Man goes to work, kids go to school, wife looks after the home and maybe works part time for some spending money or to pass the time. Kids come home from school, mom helps with homework, gets them all cleaned up and spends time teaching them some strong values. Man gets home from work and is greeted by his family. The kids regale him with stories of school while he takes off his coat and shoes and wife finishes making a healthy dinner. He is happy to enjoy the peace and quiet of home after a hard day at work. Everyone sits down together and eats their dinner with some friendly conversation and maybe a little lecturing or sermonizing from father. Kids go to bed and husband and wife spend some time alone together doing whatever it is they like to do: reading, playing cards, talking, etc. Husband and wife go to bed and do it all again in the morning.

2011-ish: live. The household is now like this: Man goes to work, kids go to school, wife goes to work. Kids finish school, but mom and dad aren't home, so they go stay with a family friend, or even complete stranger until wife gets done work. Wife picks kids up from other house to bring them home. Kids are rowdy and disrespectful of mom and treat her poorly because she hasn't had the time to spend with them to teach them to show the respect she deserves. Dad gets home from work, listening to the kids being rowdy and mom yelling at them to smarten up while he takes off his coat and shoes. He regrets coming home to all this anger and frustration, when he could have stayed at work and at least gotten paid for it. Mom is too tired from working all day to cook a decent healthy meal, so she microwaves a frozen lasagna for everyone to eat. Everyone sits and eats in the living room watching TV because they don't particularly want to talk to each other. Kids go to bed. Husband and wife have an argument about who works harder at providing for the family and how neither one of them particularly feels like doing more around the house because they're both so tired. They go to bed frustrated, and do it all again in the morning.

Is this an over-generalization? Yes. However, I don't think it's all that far off of our average household in this society. I think it's a tragedy.

The feminists had it in their head that women were second-class citizens and they needed to be able to work like men to be respected like men. While I will grant that they were treated as lesser, they never were actually lesser. To be equal is to be the same. To be equivalent is to be different, but of equal value. This is how we were meant to be. Men screwed up by treating women as second-class when we really depended on them as much as they depended on us.

We are hardwired so that men are the hunter-gatherers, or principle bread-winners in modern terms, and women looked after home and hearth. Now that women have entered the workforce in such strength, they no longer have the option of being homemakers. The family can not enjoy a comparable quality of life unless the woman also works full-time, so she must. Women have always been the more adaptable half of the species. Men have never been, nor will we ever be as able to take care of the family like women can, but women are certainly capable of winning bread to feed the family should the man fail.

How do we go back? I wish I knew the answer. It scares the bejeezus out of me knowing that my wife and I will both have to work part time and neither one of us will be able to focus on the raising of our child. My child will grow up eating preheated or fast food with his stressed-out parents, and I don't know how to fix the problem. (I'll also argue that this is why our society is obese)

How can I provide a decent quality of life for my young family without needing my wife to work full-time? I can't. As a society, we need to find a way to give women the option of going back to the home to look after their families. This doesn't make them slaves, or servants, or serfs, or anything lesser than a man. This means they are doing what is needed for their families so the children can grow up strong, healthy, educated, loved, respectful, and happy. Homemakers also provide a sanctuary for men to escape from their jobs and decrease the stress level before going back to work the next day.

I will doubtlessly vote for the first politician who comes forward and says he has a plan to bring homemakers back into society. We need them more now than ever.

Driving like an idiot

My mom used to tell me I was too judgmental. It's an ironic statement, given that she had just judged me as judgmental, but that's it. I like to watch what people do in their day-to-day life and wonder why. Why don't people think about what's about to happen? Let me try to stick to hypothetical situations instead of the real-life ones.

Why do people do this? If you can afford to get trashed, you can afford the $8 cab ride. Personally, when I'm in control of a large chunk of steel weighing well over 1000lbs and travelling at over 100km/h, I like to be in pretty good control. 

This also goes for distracted driving. While I believe the new law in Alberta is a little bit overkill, I think the police need to have a tool to protect these retards (I'll rant about political correctness later) from themselves. If you're driving on Deerfoot Trail in Calgary while eating leftover chinese food with chopsticks while talking on your cell phone and doing pilates, you should be snapped back to reality in a very severe way. This also goes for texting while driving. For the time it takes for you to send "on my way", assuming you can type really fast, your car will have covered 3 football fields while you weren't looking. There's a lot of shit for you to run into! Don't be dumb. Eating a sandwich you picked up at McDonald's while driving is practically harmless, as long as the road conditions are good and you can keep one hand on the wheel, you're fine.